7 replies to this topic

[Santosh]

Hi ,
I am working on brand new sites and my clients gives a list of keywords that is highly competittive.If i promote a long tail keyword ,is it possible short tail keyword associated with long tail will promote itself like (mobile phone deals - short tail), (cheap mobile phone deals uk-long tail).if i promote "cheap mobile phone deals uk"," mobile phone deals" will promote itself.is it true or not?

[qwerty]

To some extent. A page is somewhat relevant to any of the words and phrases associated with it, either through text on the page, in the title, or in links pointing to it, so a page that contains the phrase "cheap mobile phone deals uk" has a degree of relevance for the phrase "mobile phone deals". And unless your page contains only those three words, the long-tail relevance is going to happen naturally anyway. That is, if the word "red" is on the page, even if it's not sitting in front of "mobile phone deals," you're going to have some (but probably not much) relevance to the query "red mobile phone deals" and even "deals on red mobile phones".

But the more competitive a phrase is, the harder you need to work. If, in optimizing a page for the longer tail phrase, you use a title of "cheap mobile phone deals uk," you're arguably weakening your relevance for the short tail phrase, since you could have given the page a title of just "mobile phone deals" -- it's generally (albeit not universally) believed that you should put your keyword phrase as close to the beginning of the title as possible, and that extra words, even if they're not at the beginning, weaken that relevance somewhat.

On the other hand, you have to live in the real (internet) world. A new page without major branding and authority behind it just isn't going to show up for a highly competitive phrase. You may have to accept that and just target the long tail while you build up your brand recognition.

By the way, I hope the example you gave is just hypothetical. If not, this page is likely to compete with yours

[Santosh]

Thank you qwerty for your reply, what i understand from your reply is in title tag i should use only the short tail keyword like "mobile phone deals" and for promoting long tail keyword ,text should placed on page content or getting links on that keyword like "cheap mobile deals".I am providing you example which one is better for title tag just let me know.


<title>Htc phones - Htc Mobile Phones |Htc Contract Phones UK</title>

or

<title>Htc phones -Buy Htc Mobile Phones,contract at Best Price UK</title>

[qwerty]

Thank you qwerty for your reply, what i understand from your reply is in title tag i should use only the short tail keyword like "mobile phone deals" and for promoting long tail keyword ,text should placed on page content or getting links on that keyword like "cheap mobile deals".

Not necessarily. Have you examined how competitive the long-tail phrase is?

[Hichem]

and that extra words, even if they're not at the beginning, weaken that relevance somewhat.

This is .. let's say new to me

are you saying that if I'm trying to rank for "search engine" , making my title "search engine website" will narrow my chances to rank for "search engine" ??

[qwerty]

I'm saying that, in extremely competitive cases (extreme enough that I've never felt the need to do this), one could argue that the best possible use of the title tag (for ranking purposes only -- this leaves out any possible benefits from branding, optimizing for more than one keyword phrase, or making the page appear to have been written for consumption by humans) is to make it the keyword phrase and nothing but the keyword phrase.

That's just an extrapolation from the generally accepted concepts that 1) the closer to the beginning of the title you put the keyword phrase, the better and 2) the keyword phrase plus a few other words is better than the keyword phrase plus a bunch of other words.

But please don't take that to mean that I'm recommending doing that. I'm a firm believer in both branding and the idea that a page can be optimized for more than one keyword phrase, not to mention many long-tail phrases that you're not necessarily even considering when you create the page.

[Davolfan]

Qwerty is spot on. In order to build authority & be recognized you will need to start off promoting your long-tailed keyword as the short version is far too competitive. Over time, if your on-page seo is well optimized and you have an effective back-linking strategy, then you will be able to compete for the shorter more competitive keyword. Having said that though, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from targeting the shorter more competitive keyword from the beginning, though you will need to accept that the time span for your page to rank will simply be longer.
This is a personal decision. I know some marketers targeting some super competitive keywords but they are extremely patient in their linking strategies. This is their business model and I guess it is one way of entering a super competitive niche if you want to play a waiting game.

[keyon]

...a page can be optimized for more than one keyword phrase, not to mention many long-tail phrases that you're not necessarily even considering when you create the page.

A lot of truth here. I think people sometimes forget that the bulk of a website's search traffic (once the site is established) will usually come from a zillion different long-tail variations of a targeted keyword phrase, and NOT the keyword phrase itself, necessarily. It's pretty easy to spot this phenomenon in your Google Analytics -- "search sent you xx visitors via xx keyword phrases"